Project "Professional Interaction"

Sub-project: Hypothesis Building in Medical Care

This sub-project reconstructs the interactionally organized process of hypotheses building within psychosomatic diagnostics. Interactive and cognitive tasks of the diagnostic process will be reconstructed as well as the interactionally recognizable procedures dealing with these tasks. Interactions as database for the analyses are threefold:

  1. Diagnostic psychosomatic interviews with patients dealing with the manual of the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics (see Arbeitskreis OPD 2007)
  2. Recall interviews with treating therapists dealing with the process of hypothesis formation in the respective interview with the patient (see Pomerantz 2005)
  3. Expert-interviews with OPD-experts not involved in (1)
The triangulation by using three different data aims at both identifying structurally relevant phenomena and uncovering how doctors' thoughts impinge on interactional processes in the interview. References:
  • Arbeitskreis OPD (2007). Operationalisierte Psychodynamische Diagnostik OPD-2. Das Manual für Diagnostik und Therapieplanung. Bern.
  • Pomerantz, A. (2005). Using participants' video stimulated comments to complement analyses of interactional practices. In: H. te Molder & J. Potter (eds.) Talk and cognition: Discourse, mind and social interaction. Cambridge, pp. 93-113.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Thomas Spranz-Fogasy, spranz(at)ids-mannheim.de